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I D A PLEONASM ?

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Please excuse my ignorance but I must confess I am rather surprised to find such a lively and extensive debate on the subject of "intelligent design".

I more or less guessed what was meant by the expression but can't help feeling it is something of a pleonasm. Apart from an "intelligence", I cannot imagine what else can create, invent or draw up a "design".

Perhaps the qualifying term "intelligent" is there to indicate that the design in question contains no flaws or errors. If so it would seem that it is "flawless design" that is meant.

If that is not the case and the author of the expression does mean "intelligent" (but not excluding the possibility of flaws and errors), then I do feel that it is a pleonasm.

It should be sufficient to refer to "design", the word "intelligent" being superfluous.

The subject then becomes "Is there a design?". Which, of course, implies "Is there a designer?".

Or, quite simply, is there a god or gods? Is there such a thing as the supernatural?

There is nothing very original in that question but, at least it explains why the debate is never ending.

Perhaps some scientific mind coined the term "intelligent design" in order to translate the existentialist paradigm into what he thought was correct scientific language.

I am not sure he got it right.

I would be delighted if somebody could throw some light on the subject.

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Dan, that's it, argue the sidelines? I expected some argument on the direct attack at the heart of the theory might have drawn a stronger response. Perhaps you don't understand the major problems ID has.

BTW, the Discovery Institute isn't the scientific community. I had a search on "Web of Science", an online citation index, for articles that featured "intelligent design" in the topic.
I made sure that the search returned only articles, not letters or conference proceedings or reviews and were somewhat related to biology, genetics or ecology. Guess how many I found?

23

That's it, 23, I'm not joking. Most of them were about education and who is teaching ID, some were about how it related to evolution. If I extended the criteria to include "religion", the number went up to 43!

Not one of them was written by the scientists you say are working in the field. It seems all they have been doing for the last 15 years is writing books and letters and magazine articles etc. for public consumption.
Not one of them was actual scientific research into ID, or using ID as a basis for exploration or experimentation into observed phenomena.

I did this search to find out why you say ID is "growing".

Where are the research articles that have been using ID as the driving theory?

ID may be growing amongst the homeschoolers and fundamentalists, but it is dead within the scientific community. If you want to take your fire engine simile a bit further, it's like saying that all fire engines are red, except for the one that is in Shelby, Nebraska. But that's really more of a water tanker.

Another aside, an ID proponent once told me that ID was picking up steam, and everyone had better get aboard the ID train or get out of the way! That was 10 years ago, the train never showed up, I guess it ran out of steam, but the railway is still selling tickets at your local church.

By the way, you don't want to know how many articles "evolution" pulled up.

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Dear Bugsy,

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If, as I suggested in my recent post, the subject of discussion on this forum relates to the existence or the non existence of a god or gods, I doubt that the question arose only ten years ago - more likely ten million years ago.

I do agree, however, that it has probably run out of steam some time ago. There's no stopping pogress. Who knows where the energy is coming from now? Petrol, hydro-electric, wind, nuclear ... just plain curiosity?

Watever it is, judging by this forum, it may well go on for another ten million years or so.

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Extoprian1 wrote:

"The idea that the laws exist reasonlessly is deeply anti-rational." And here he is referring to the laws of nature/physics.

He ignores the very reasonable position that man-made laws require not only a reason for their existence, but require a law-maker as well. The laws of physics are in a different category if only because no reason or author has been established."

The above is an example of fuzzy thinking. The same word may have different meanings. An example is the word, cleave. It means coming together as in "A man and his wife shall cleave together". It also separates as in "The butcher cleaver cleaves the meat."

Law is such a word.

Man made laws are of several types. One man made law is called God's law. For Jews Gods says you shouldn't eat pork. For Christians God says you can only enter the Kingdom of Heaven if you believe in the Jesus mumbojumbo. For Muslims you can have up to four wives and possibly several porcupines. God used to allow Jews to have both wives and concubines, "Abe, I know you're horny. Go see Hagar. I have a headache." now Jews are allow only one wife. God's law varies from place to place and time to time. They are really man's laws since they come from books written by humans.

Legislative and administrative law by governments are two more types of man's laws.

Jews can eat pork. Australians can drive on the right side of the road. Man made laws can be violated even if they are called God's laws.

However, law as used to describe the behaviour of matter cannot be violated. The word has a different meaning. I cannot jump off a cliff and decide I will not obey the law of gravity. The laws of physics and chemistry describe the behaviour of matter. The word, law, has an entirely different meaning, and there is no reason to make the analogy that such laws require a lawgiver.

The laws of physics do not require a law giver

AJ Phillips:

Re my suggestion for Lennox and Meyer, I never suggested their arguments were airtight, I simply said they do provide evidence which can be taken to point towards an Intelligent Designer. That is, the case for evolution is not completely self evident and obviously true as many claim.

Re: Detection by scientific research. Either you have misunderstood me or I have inadequately explained my own position. I never said God was completely indemonstrable and completely untouched by reason, such that he exists in this other strange realm of “faith”, which may as well be faith in Santa. I simply mean no scientific experiment can directly establish his existence. I can’t say to you right now “Ok, I’m off to the lab”, and return with a Bunsen burner, flame going, painting the light of Jesus in the sky. There is no formula which makes it obvious that God exists.

Rather, many things can be seen as clues to a higher intelligence, a divine being. The fine tuning of the universe, the existence of a seemingly contingent universe, the ordered nature of science itself, and so on. Jesus In my view God provides an explanation of all of these things better than any rival hypothesis I know of. This is different from arguing that God can be established by science in the same way that sodium and copper can. You write as if I’d made a completely different claim from what I have (intended to) make. God can’t be established by a formula, and nor would I expect him to be. Rather, there are things which point towards him, making belief in God reasonable. Many good arguments can be made for God’s existence, and none of them are completely self evident, obvious and establish his existence beyond any doubt, however a good cumulative case can be made by appealing to many arguments

Having said all of that, I also believe a strong case can be made against the proposition that “nature is all that exists”. It so happens that these two worldviews are in direct opposition (naturalism and theism), however one may well and truly discard naturalism yet not entertain theism (as CS Lewis did for a while before becoming a Christian).

On naturalism: There are serious question marks over whether objective values, meaning in language and our ability to reason from belief to belief can even be accounted for conceptually within a naturalistic framework. And for that reason I find naturalism unlikely to be true. Under a naturalistic framework, everything must be reducible to nature. And I’m not sure that meaning and reason can be. This is not a claim that could be targeted by the “God of the Gaps” objectors, rather the conceptual problems with naturalism make scientific evidences irrelevant to the discussion. It is a conceptual issue with causation. To put the problem simply: If naturalism is true, causes are ultimately reducible to chemicals and other physical elements. Yet, many of our beliefs are ultimately caused by other beliefs.

The options for the naturalist in response to these claims seem to be: Disagree that our beliefs can cause our other beliefs (and hence deny the enterprise of science itself), or argue that our beliefs can be reducible to physical states. But this seems very unlikely, given that the physical world would appear to be causally closed if naturalism is true. That’s one considerations which makes naturalism seem very unlikely to me